Muskegon County Commissioners to vote on architect, construction manager for jail addition and juvenile transition center

MUSKEGON, MI – Muskegon County Commissioners will receive a recommendation Tuesday to sign $3.5 million in contracts for an architect and construction manager to work on a jail addition and a new juvenile transition center.

The county’s advisory committee for the jail and juvenile transition project on Thursday, April 19, voted unanimously to recommend the Holland-based GMB Architecture + Engineering and the Lansing-based Granger Construction Co. for the work, said Muskegon County Sheriff Dean Roesler, who is chairman of the committee.

The proposal now goes to the Board of Commissioners, which meets on Tuesday as the full board. Contracts are still being drawn up, but according to the agenda for the meeting, the county is prepared to contract with GMB for just more than $2 million and $1.49 million for Granger Construction Co.

The county had previously used a consulting firm, RQAW Consulting engineers & Architects, to select sites and draw up a rough plan and budget for the project, set to total between $35 million and $41 million.

Officials have said in the past that the county has about $7 million in cash in a jail improvement fund. The total construction costs would be financed with bonds, which would be eventually paid off without any new taxes by using money saved from operating the more efficient jail, according to the consultants’ plan.

“I think the big thing people need to understand is the plan presented by RQAW is of course conceptual,” Roesler said. Final drawings for the project will “still have to be in budget (and) it’ll follow the concept,” but some details could change.

If commissioners approve the contracts, county staff will immediately begin working with the architect on designs and with the construction manager to refine the project’s budget, Muskegon County Finance and Management Services Director Heath Kaplan said.

“If it’s approved on Tuesday, we’ll meet with them on Wednesday,” he said.

Four architecture firms and six construction managers responded to the county’s March 13 request for companies to present their qualifications, Kaplan said.

County staff ranked the qualifications of the architecture firms, Kaplan said. The construction manager firms were ranked by a team that was comprised of two county staff members and two outside members on the staff of Kent and Kalamazoo counties, who have recent experience in jail construction projects.